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Messages - RonJ

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541
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Ailsa Craig
« on: October 16, 2018, 05:35:22 PM »
I have seen all kinds of pictures and videos of parts of the earth's landscape hidden by the curvature of the earth.  In my 20 years at sea I've also seen ships appear and disappear behind the curvature of the earth.  Now I'm going to bring up another interesting sight that you don't see very often, and probably only at sea.  At times our ship would be operating in clear skies and fair seas.  We knew that there was a weather front approaching because we had satellite based weather pictures and forecasts.  Yea, I know, satellites don't really exist, but in any event the pictures we received, again by satellite would depict the expected front.  Our first indication of the approaching front would be clouds that appeared to reach high in the sky and all the way to the sea.  A view thru our powerful telescope would also show that the clouds went all the way to the sea.  An hour later the clouds would appear to slowly rise and our ship would go under the clouds that were about 500 to 1000 feet above us.  Yes, I know that probably you would think that I had no way of measuring the height of the clouds, but I could make a reasonable estimate.  I also flew airplanes for about 30 years and was a commercial pilot.  I just didn't work for the airlines because they didn't pay as much as the Merchant Marine.  A pilot can usually look at the bottom of a cloud layer and decide if it's safe to make a visual flight rules flight, or if a instrument flight rules flight plan will have to be filed.  So I did have a reasonable feel for the height of the overcast layer after we went under.  I agree that things could have been changing as we approached the front, and I know that King Neptune can do all kinds of thing to sailors, but for all the many times I've seen this phenomenon I would have to say that you were just seeing the curvature of the spherical earth at work.

542
If there is a shielding argument then the old equation of F=MA will have to be modified.  There's no shielding variables in that equation.  If Newton's Second law is not defective then I would expect to find a suspension cable holding the moon up.  If the shielding variable is, indeed, viable then you could check that by putting a BB inside a basketball.  If the moon is inside the dome, then I would think that the surface of it would be protected.  You can see a lot of blemishes on the surface with your own eyes.  I've always been told they were made by the collisions from asteroids over millions of years.  Maybe the dome has been penetrated many times by those objects.  Maybe the moon was created with all the blemishes and is some kind of 'manufacturing defect'.  These are all interesting questions and keeps my brain churning. 

543
I can understand why an acceleration of the flat earth (in some unspecified vector direction) would hold all of us on the ground.  The flat earth theories also seem to require a firmament (dome) to keep the sea water and air from falling off the edge.  Additionally, the Sun and Moon are inside the dome and rotate at a certain rate to match what is seen by humans on the surface of the earth.  Now the big question is what keeps the moon (a sphere of 32 miles) at 3000 miles above the earth's surface in place?  I suppose that there could be a cable that holds the moon to the top of the dome but no one has mentioned that.   You can also see a lot of surface damage (craters) on the moon.  I was always told that they were produced by the collisions of asteroids.  Did these asteroids come thru the dome or was the moon made that way (by unspecified beings) before it was suspended inside the dome?       

544
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Cruising the round earth?
« on: October 15, 2018, 03:29:59 PM »
No, guess again,  The ship I was on had a very, very powerful telescope that was mounted on a fixed pivot-able stand on the bridge.  It was the latest & greatest you could buy.  Our lookouts used it all the time when we were in an area with a lot of small fishing boats, like Japan.  No one wanted to run them down with our large ship.  Many of the crew members were enjoying the view as we came into Japan.  They were all using that telescope and watched as Mt Fuji appeared to rise slowly out of the sea.  You couldn't see the coast of Japan at that time either, even with the telescope.  We knew our exact position, naturally, because we were professional seamen and our livelihoods depended on it.  Eventually our powerful marine radar, which has an even better view than a telescope (12 foot antenna), started to pick up the first echos of the shore line.  Many Japanese ports were a regular stop for us so the view we saw wasn't unusual at all.  There were other ports that were in large cities that had skyscrapers.  We saw the same thing there, those buildings appeared to rise out of the sea.  The echos from the tops of those buildings were also the first thing our radar saw as well.  Any experienced sailor knows that the earth is a globe and has for 100 years. 

545
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: Shooting stars
« on: October 15, 2018, 03:01:08 PM »
I would propose an interesting experiment.  Take a ship to Antarctica.  My sister and her husband did just that earlier this year so I know that it can be done.  Once there, you could launch a drone.  Use that drone to take pictures of the bottom of the dome mount.   You might crash into the dome, but if you did at, say at 1000 feet, that would be a huge victory for the flat earth society.  If everything was properly documented you might even win the Nobel prize.  You might also 'piss off' the operators of the dome so be careful. 

546
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Amateur radio shows the earth is round
« on: October 15, 2018, 02:36:42 PM »
The word amateur just means 'something done without payment', it doesn't mean that the person 'knows nothing'.  I have been an amateur radio operator for well over 50 years.  When I was in high school I started out playing around with radios as a hobby.  Later, I did become a 'professional' and engaged in 'playing around with radios' for pay.  I would agree that it's difficult to witness the roundness of the earth using HF radio.  The only instance I can think of that I've personally witnessed when I was in high school was hearing Russian stations using Morse code on about 14 MHz.  Usually the sounds would have the normal characteristics of any station in the world.  Occasionally, the sound would have a strong echo along with it.  That echo occurred because the same signal from the Russian station would come from two sources.  The first source was the 'direct short path' route, and the other signal came from the around the earth 'long path' route.  I suppose that the flat earth model could claim that the second signal was from the firmament, but that then opens a whole other 'can of worms'. 

547
Flat Earth Community / Re: Revolution
« on: October 13, 2018, 08:58:19 PM »
No one mentioned the microwave link industry.  A lot of the internet goes intercity via microwave.  Microwave equipment manufacturers claim that you have to factor in the curvature of the earth (among other things) when designing a microwave link.  After all it is a line line of sight technology.  Maybe they are just trying to sell more equipment by claiming that you can only get a certain range between sites if you don't.  It's nice to sell 10 sets of equipment rather than 5 that might only be necessary for a flat earth installation.  You would still have to take natural obstructions into consideration on the flat earth like a tall building that could be in the path.  However, you wouldn't have to consider buying an additional 200 feet (or more) of expensive tower and feedline to overcome that pesky curvature of the earth problem that the sellers of the equipment claim will be needed. Even if you don't build your own tower, and just rent space, most tower owners charge more if you want a higher spot on their tower.  Think cheaper rent.  Could this be a great business opportunity for some young entrepreneur?  Think of the advantage he would have when submitting a competitive bid for a new link. Soon the cellular phone folks will be cranking up the new 5G technology and that should exponentially increase the amount of data flowing around the country. The new 'internet of things (IOT)' will greatly increase the dependency of the 'average Joe' on the internet.  If I were you, I would consider keeping this technology quiet and maybe even look into the patent possibilities.   

548
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Curvature visible to naked eye
« on: October 13, 2018, 02:07:17 PM »
My comment was meant to mean that you wouldn't expect to see a curved horizon no matter which way you looked when nothing else is visible.  The fact that you saw a boat partly hidden by the curvature of the earth is one of the reasons why sailors for many hundreds of years came to the conclusion that the earth is a sphere.  A good marine radar will also confirm what your eyes see.  You have to be very careful about completely trusting your senses.  Don't believe that?  Well, just visit a good magician and he will school you.  All the moisture at the surface of the sea and swell can cause much of the hidden view of a vessel to disappear then reappear over a short period of time.  The fact that you could see more of what was hidden by the earth's curvature the higher you got was the reason for a crow's nest on a mast of the old sailing ships.  A sailor with a telescope on that mast was usually the first one who shouted 'land ho' while approaching the coast.  Additionally some of the 'ole time' sailors would even keep numerous land birds with them.  They would be released if shore was believed to be nearby.  A 'birds eye view' would be even higher than a sailor in the crow's nest.  If a bird suddenly took off in a straight line away from the ship you would have some certainty that the bird is making a 'bee line' towards land.  Sometimes the bird would be mistaken and come back and land on the mast somewhere.  In that case it meant you had to keep sailing in your intended direction some more and keep a close watch on that bird.  Now we have GPS and radar. The radar can usually start to see echos from the coast line long before your eye can.  Those echos will start to appear right out of what used to be empty ocean.  Again another indication of the curved earth.  On the flat earth paradigm it wouldn't matter how high you were.  Sure, you would be able to see farther inland at height but all you really need is to see is the initial vestiges of land.   

549
Flat Earth Projects / Re: Wiki - Moon
« on: October 12, 2018, 07:20:16 PM »
For the last 50 years or so the ham radio community has been engaging in moon bounce activity.  These 'hams' are, of course, just regular people whose hobby happens to be designing, building, and/or operating radios of all kinds.  I have been a ham radio operator myself for well over 50 years.  On of these hobby pursuits has been known as moon bounce.  You can actually bounce a radio signal off the moon and have it return to your receiver or the receiver of another ham operator.  If you believe in the well known universal constant speed of light then using that figure has allowed the ham operators to calculate the moon's approximate distance of about 384,400 Km.  Hams are usually not involved with the government in any way and take no money from anyone.  They do all they do because it's a hobby and fun.  The efforts to conduct the moon bounce activities have been enhanced because the astronauts that visited the moon (if you so choose to believe that) have left behind a reflector that makes the returning signals stronger.  You can believe this or believe that the conspiracy has even penetrated into the private population.  Maybe I can take advantage of this and enhance my retirement benefits with an additional check from some government 'black' agency.  I wonder.... 

550
Flat Earth Theory / Re: Curvature visible to naked eye
« on: October 12, 2018, 06:39:41 PM »
You wouldn't ever expect to see the curvature of the earth under these circumstances.  The earth is so large compared to a man.  At sea, in any direction you care to look, the visible horizon is always at the same distance away.  This is why the horizon will always look like a flat line at sea.  Sure, you can climb a mast and look from there, but you will still see the same thing.  Trust me, I've had to do it countless times.  There are other ways to verify that the earth is a sphere, but looking at the horizon won't get you very far.  Even looking at a another ship coming towards you, or going away from you can be difficult.  The atmosphere can cause the light to bend and deceive your eye.  This is especially evident at sea because off all the moisture in the air for obvious reasons.  A radar is a little better tool for observing the effect of another ship coming up over the horizon of a spherical earth, but even then the microwave energy can also bend a little because it just like light, but of a lower electromagnetic frequency.  You can see some of the effect, for sure, if you carefully observe the target echo on the radar, but it is still difficult to see even if you know exactly what you are looking for.  Even the radar on an aircraft at 42000 feet looking down on the earth would only see a difference in distance between a flat earth target and a spherical earth target of about 0.1%.  There are other ways to verify the spherical earth paradigm.  Experiments have been done for 1000's of years but the results still aren't believed by some.  Let the struggle continue.

551
Flat Earth Community / Re: Revolution
« on: October 12, 2018, 02:40:06 PM »
A good place to start would be to produce an accurate flat earth chart.  We always used the United States WGS 84 and British Admiralty charts for navigation.  The WGS 84 charts are based upon the earth being a oblate spheroid.
The British charts are Mercator projection charts.  Those charts greatly distort the actual shape of the land masses on the earth.  Any course that we follow from China to the United States is always a curved one and we have to steer a different heading every day.  A good flat earth chart would have the shortest distance between any two points on the earth as a perfectly straight line.  Such a chart should be easier to produce as well.  The grid lines of latitude and longitude should be easy to produce on a flat plane.  The well known arctic and antarctic circles would also have to be accurately depicted.  It is well know by the Alaskan people that they are the home of the 'midnight sun'.  A simple trip to a place like Kotzebue, Alaska would confirm that the sun never sets and never rises there at certain times of the year.  Years ago my father and mother flew a small Cessna 182 from Iowa to Katzebue so  I know that it can be done.  Radio communications has changed a lot in the last 30 years as so many people use cell phones for communications.  Most TV reception is received either by cable or satellite dish.  However many companies still heavily depend on microwave communications to transmit data from point to point.  The antennas used are usually on top of tall, expensive, towers. Good line of site communications over long distances by microwaves should be possible with much shorter, and cheaper, towers.  I see a great business opportunity there as well.  If I were 50 years younger I would sure be tempted to investigate a golden opportunity like this.

552
Maybe I'm missing something here.  I do understand how a constant acceleration of 9.81 meters/s/s could make me not like what I see on the scale.  Yes, I believe that gravity is kind of 'spooky' and why Einstein had a lot of problems with it.  When I was in school we were always taught that acceleration was a vector.  You have the magnitude correct, but what about the direction?  If a direction could be determined maybe you could verify using other celestial bodies that the earth is indeed speeding up and heading off in some direction at a constant rate of acceleration.  The other big problem is that my 'back of the envelope' calculations reveled that if the earth started at 0 speed, relative to what, I don't know, and then started a constant acceleration to make us all stay on this earth, we would reach the speed of light in about 1 year.  Of course if you choose to believe Einstein, as you get closer and closer to the speed of light, the amount of energy to keep the constant mass in constant acceleration would rapidly increase towards infinity.  It looks to me like you need some other theory of attraction other than a constant acceleration.  The theory will 'crash and burn' eventually unless you can change the speed of light.   

553
Flat Earth Community / Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« on: October 11, 2018, 04:32:04 PM »
You aren't too far off.  On a large container ship you can be standing between 130 and 150 above the waterline while on the bridge.  Our radar antennas are on a small tower even higher than that.  If we are approaching another container ship coming from the opposite direction it too could have a mast height approaching 200 feet above the water.  You are not reading the loran document correctly.  Loran uses low frequencies that will bounce off the earth's ionosphere, or firmament, if you choose to believe.  Lower frequencies have a much longer 'line of site' range.  As an amateur radio operator years ago I would try to contact Russian stations using morse code.  Sometimes the lower frequency propagation would be such that I would receive one signal from the direct route and another from the same place only from the other direction around the globe.  It was rare to hear this but when you did it was easy to tell.  The echo you heard was very distinctive.  Even as a kid in high school messing with electronics equipment I had indications of the global earth.   The only problem with any lower frequency station is that the physics of the situation limits the speed of any data transmission you wish to use.  To get the gigibit speeds you hear advertised all the time on TV you need microwave frequencies.  Microwaves are limited under most circumstances to line of site (global) distances.  That's why the antennas used are generally on tall tower, and those towers are spaced out in the 40 to 50 mile range. If you can get a tower on top of a hill it can help.  If I were the CIA I would also try and 'tweek' my enemies with mis-information especially if I knew that they could read my documents.  The dumber you can make your enemies think you are, the smarter you become. 

554
Flat Earth Community / Re: RE believers - why are you here?
« on: October 11, 2018, 03:49:12 PM »
My simple experiment also would show why the local business men spent millions more than necessary to build tall radio and TV towers to enhance coverage area.  Why not just save a bunch, build a smaller tower and get the same coverage using the flat earth model?  Even better, use a much smaller transmitter and antenna system, and bounce the signals off the firmament.  Wait,  In the last 50 years none of them have been able to get a system that would work like that.  They all think that the earth is a sphere and the higher that they can make their tower (spending millions) the larger their service area will be.  Every measurement I ever made with a field strength meter shows that.  Please help me figure out how to use a much smaller antenna, use a lower power transmitter, and just bounce the signals off the firmament to all the TVs in the local area.  Additionally, you would be helping the 'global warming' cause because the TV transmitters wouldn't have to use nearly as much electricity.     

555
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: satellite hoax
« on: October 11, 2018, 03:30:05 PM »
I suppose that the US 'authorities' could be colluding with the Chinese, Russians, Japanese, and some other countries to keep all their sham GPS systems under wraps.  What they should do is parole Bernie Madoff and put him to work for the government.  It's a great lie, my hat is off to them.  All the technical data observed perfectly match what I would see if the information was actually coming from an object in orbit.  This occurs even on a moving object like a ship.  Data transit times are perfectly adjusted and always match the expected values.  Maybe I'll have to get back to all the physics teachers in high school, and all my former college engineering professors and tell them that they need to adjust their curriculum.  It really doesn't matter much. I can ignore what I've learned about physics.  We always got the emails we needed and could make the necessary phone calls.  The cargo got hauled and I got a paycheck.  That's all that counts. 

556
Flat Earth Community / Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« on: October 11, 2018, 02:52:05 PM »
Yes, you can do 'line of sight' on a globe.  The only difference is that the observable distances are shorter.  Even on a globe you can see another large ship 15 miles away.  In the navy you are under a 'watchful' eye while on the ship.  When sailors got off the ship they can do all kinds of strange things in foreign ports. Just ask the navy shore patrol.  I'll bet you that the interview was conducted while the guy was off the ship and under those circumstances, can say anything he wants so long as he doesn't disclose something of a classified nature. When I was working on navy ships I wouldn't tell just any 'land lubber' the whole truth.  It's to your advantage to let your enemies believe that you are an idiot when you may not be.  That guy did a good job of that.  Under those circumstances you really can't tell if what the guy said was what he really believed, or if he was just trying to put up a 'smoke screen'.  As far as that goes, I might just be trying to do the same thing myself.  I'm carrying on.

557
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: satellite hoax
« on: October 11, 2018, 01:08:23 PM »
You said some of the loran stations were fixed and some where 'at sea'.  The diagrams you show had all the fixed stations.  We had publications on the ship that showed all that.  What I don't see is the repeater stations located 'at sea'.   I don't think we need to worry too much about hitting anything on an island. We use very accurate satellite based GPS.   

558
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: satellite hoax
« on: October 11, 2018, 04:42:49 AM »
I'm not sure where you are getting your info, but LORAN isn't used too much anymore, at least by the merchant marine.  On my last ship we did have a LORAN C receiver, but it had been shut off for the last 4 years I was aboard.  I have no objections with using LORAN and have done so on other vessels.  The accuracy was good.  GPS made LORAN unpopular and had become the preferred method of navigation.  The main objection to GPS is the ability of an enemy to jam or spoof it.  My understanding is that military ships carry LORAN in case of an attack  on the GPS system in an opening salvo of a major war.  I'm hoping that won't happen.  There are several other ways to transmit and receive data at sea.  I rode herd on 4 different satellite systems.  One gave me full internet and telephone service worldwide.  If you don't believe satellites are real, it really doesn't matter.  Data was coming in and going out, somehow.  That was the important thing.   My guess is that all the LORAN stations you mentioned have secret locations at sea.  If not I would be interested to find out where they are so we can make sure that they are navigational charts.  I wouldn't want to hit a tower with a 1000 foot ship and so any damage.   

559
Flat Earth Community / Re: Is it irrational to believe Flat Earth?
« on: October 11, 2018, 03:51:29 AM »
I did listen to the entire talk radio show.  It was late at night and kind of reminded me of listening to Art Bell telling ghost stories.  All I can say is WOW.  I have no evidence, but would say that the navy guy was quite young. The guy did have all the lingo down pat and was a good talker.  I thought that he just had a cursory knowledge of some of the stuff he was talking about and used just enough of the lingo to make is seem that he was knowledgeable.  The show was quite entertaining for me and I laughed a lot.  All I can say is that I probably was working on radars, flying airplanes, and taking apart gyros long before that guy was born.  In my opinion, some of the stuff he said was just plain BS.  Other stuff had a hint of truth and understanding but still wasn't quite correct.   You are correct in saying that I'm now washed up on the beach but I don't mind being in retirement.  If you did read my previous post you will see that I also signed my own paycheck for 23 years and wasn't letting another bozo tell me what to do.  I sold out and went to sea because it was on my 'bucket list'.

560
Flat Earth Investigations / Re: satellite hoax
« on: October 10, 2018, 05:46:43 PM »
Of course in order to win in court you would have to prove the non existence of the satellites.  Maybe the launch sites for the balloons and drone aircraft could be found.  I can attest that the KVH system does work well and from what I could see, each and every day, sure looked like a geosynchronous satellite.  The logistics and infrastructure required for such trickery should employ thousands. They seem to offer a good high speed internet connection and telephone service in the important shipping lanes in the Pacific Ocean.  Additionally the antenna pointing (azimuth and elevation) data perfectly mimics a satellite in each and every way.  I would really like to find out how they could keep those balloon and/or drones in a fixed spot day after day, month after month, year after year.  My hat is off the KVH.           

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